The Interpretation of Dreams and of Jokes : The Art and the Science

The Interpretation of Dreams and of Jokes provides a unique and integrative introduction to dream science. It addresses a notable gap in cognitive psychology on the subject of dreams and explores significant overlaps between the phenomena of dreams and jokes. Bringing together extensive research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the book provides a balanced approach to dream science that is underpinned by experimental and theoretical research. It considers the significance of dreams and their relationships to jokes, examining how both require an understanding of latent content in which context and individual differences play a large part. The book outlines a history of dream research and dream science and includes several original dream extracts for discussion. The book’s chapters explore how we can interpret meaning in dreams, how dreams might be indicators of inner psychological and somatic states, whether dreams can be used in problem-solving and the relationship between dreams and aphasia, memory and waking consciousness. This groundbreaking book will be essential reading for researchers and students from psychological and psychoanalytic backgrounds who are interested in the analysis and science of dreams. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Acknowledgments Synopsis of Book Brief Introduction 1 Historical Foreshadowings 4,000 Years Ago: The Dream of Dumuzi and the Interpretation of Geshitinanna Cro-Magnon Cave Painting of a Dream: Jouvet’s Interpretation Semantic Depth: Manifest vs. Latent Content Repression of Dreams Dreams in Religion, Philosophy, Medicine, and War Bias in Interpretation Behaviorism and the Eclipse of Dreams in Modern Psychology Conditioning and Instinctive Drift Dreams and Darwin Helmholtz’s “Unconscious Inferences”: Interpreting Depth and Constancies From Shifting 2-D Displays Cognitive Psychology’s Neglect of Dreams Memory and Dreams 2 Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and His Treatment of Jokes: Breakthroughs, Errors, Revisions Freud’s Transition From Neuroscience to Psychology Dreams as Just One Dialect From a Family of Release-Phenomena Aphasia and Dreams Clinical Samples of Aphasia Experimentally Induced Aphasia Through Subliminal Stimulation: The Pötzl Phenomenon Dreams as the “Royal Road to the Knowledge of the Unconscious” The Manifest-Latent Content Distinction and the Dream-Work Censorship Condensation Displacement Concretistic Representation Symbolism Secondary Revision (Or, Elaboration) The Dream-Work as Sub-Work Formalization of the Manifest-Latent Content Distinction Manifest Content . Manifest Content Interacting With Context Outright Errors in Freud’s Dream Theory Dreams as Wish-Fulfillments Children’s Dreams Dreams as Guardians of Sleep Jokes The Interpretation of Jokes The Joke-Work Joke Samples, Tendentious and Innocent Multiple Levels of Meaning and Content-Analysis 3 Samples of Dreams and Other Release Phenomena, With Interpretations and Commentaries Freud’s Standard Approach to Interpreting Dreams and Other Release Phenomena Freud’s Interpretation of a Freudian Slip: The Fugitive “Aliquis” Preamble and Text Free-Associations Interpretation The Irma Dream and Its Analysis (Sigmund Freud) Preamble Dream of July 23rd–24th, 1895 Free-Associations and Analysis The Picture Dream of Dolores P. (Matthew Erdelyi) The Elephant Dream of Alice V. (John Nemiah) Preamble The Dream Associations to the Dream Comments Allan Hobson’s “Mozart at the Museum” Dream The Dream Preamble and Associations “Worst Case Scenario” Dream of Zelda (With Biographical Notes On the Dreamer) Preamble Zelda’s Dream Associations Author’s Postscript (Matthew Erdelyi) Freud Dreams Chinese Poetry .... (Fú Mèng Hàn Shi) (by Diane M. Zizak) Problem-Solving Dreams (Deirdre Barrett) Dream-Like Cognition in Schizophrenia The Case of N. (Matthew Erdelyi) The Psychotic Dr. Schreber (Sigmund Freud) Theoretical Cautions On the Overlaps Between Dreams and Schizophrenia 4 Neuroscience Foundations of Dreaming REM Sleep: REM’s, Short-Wave EEG’s, Motor Inhibition, Genital Arousal—and Dreams EEG’s and Dreams Motor Inhibition in the REM State Genital Arousal During REM Sleep The Unraveling of the REM = Dreaming Consensus Double-Dissociation Between the REM State and Dreaming (Mark Solms) Hobson’s Revision of the Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis: The “AIM” Model The “Hot Zone” of Dreaming (Giulio Tononi, Francesca Siclari, Et Al.) Form Vs. Content: Hobson’s “Formalistic” Theory and the Question of Dream Meaning The Formalistic Approach Misunderstandings About the Meaninglessness of Dream Content Dreams as Paradoxical States of Simultaneous Activation and Deactivation Complications With the “Frontality” Notion Complications With the “Limbic System” (Does It Even Exist?—Joseph LeDoux) The Hippocampus and Memory The Klüver–Bucy Syndrome The Neural Default Network: Mind-Wandering, Fantasy, Daydreams, Dreams (Marcus Raichle, Randy Buckner, Jessica Andrews-Hanna, Dan Schacter, Bill Domhoff, Et Al.) Release Phenomena: Meaning and Implications 5 Quantitative Content-Analysis Quantitative Vs. Qualitative Analysis Recovery of Subliminal Stimuli in Dreams, Daydreams, and Fantasy (Pötzl, Fisher, Haber and Erdelyi, Hilgard, Giddan, Shevrin and Luborsky, Leuschner Et Al., Schredl Et Al.) Signal Detection Theory (SDT) and Fantasy ROC Curves, D', and . Quantitative Content-Analysis in Literary Criticism (Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, and the Stanford Literary Lab) Quantitative Content-Analysis of Dreams (Hall, Van De Castle, Domhoff, Hartmann, Schredl, Bulkeley) Personality in Dreams Problems With Current Quantitative Content-Analytic Approaches to Dreams Neglect of Deep Meanings and of Unconscious Contents Problems With Generic (One-Size-Fits-All) Content-Analytic Schemes Mechanical Stances Toward Statistical Power The Continuity Hypothesis (Freud, Jung, Calkins, Hall, Domhoff, Schredl, Bulkeley, Erdelyi, Jenkins) Application of Signal Detection Theory to Dream Recall (Erdelyi Et Al.) 6 Dreaming as Noisy Remembering Incorporation of Awake Experiences in Dreams Over Time (Freud, Jouvet, Nielsen, Blagrove, Brugger) Short Term Intervals (0—Around 1 Month) Very Long-Term Intervals Incorporation of Drastic Body-Events in Dreams Hypermnesic Dreams Zelda’s Hypermnesic Dreams (As Reported By Zelda) The Watch Lost at the Beach and Found in a Dream Cutty Sark The Ratatouille Dream Commentary On Zelda’s Hypermnesic Dreams Hypermnesic Dreams Reported By Freud The Recovery of “Kontuszówka” By Freud’s Patient Leading, Lagging, and Concurrent Indicators Lexical Leakage and Its Prediction of Biopsy Outcomes (Donald Spence) Dream Correlates of the Ovulation Cycle (Robert Van De Castle) Dreams as Predictors of Psychological Breakdowns Dreams as Predictors of the Course of an Illness Parasomnias as Concurrent Indicators of Dreaming (Arnulf) Amnesia and Hypermnesia for “The War of the Ghosts” Over Intervals of Weeks and Months: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses (Matthew Erdelyi, Michael Halberstam, Merryl Feigen-Pfau, Joyce Finks) Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Karina’s and Maya’s Repeated Recalls Freudian Distortions Are the Same as Bartlettian Distortions But for Motive: Implications for Freud’s Dream-Work Notion The Associative Structure of Memory and Resulting “Spheres of Meaning” 7 Overview and Conclusions Dreams Have Meaning, and at More Than One Level Context Is the Key to Latent Meanings Formalization of the Manifest-Latent Content Distinction m . M × Context Dynamics: Weighting of Items in the Contextual Ecologyanoid N, the Magician Subliminal Effects Can Be Detected in Large-N Free-Associations Regularities in Dream Content Are Revealed By Large-N Quantitative Analysis Personality Emerges in Dreams, But Only (As in Awake-Life) With Adequate N’s Interpretation Is Probabilistic Complex Dreams Require Statistical N’s But Jokes Work With N = 1 Context Reduces Degrees of Freedom in Interpretation Symbolism Universal Symbols and Universal Referents Biologically Prepared Meanings (Darwin, Evolutionary Psychology, Ethology) Distortions—Bartlettian and Freudian: Implications for the Dream-Work Notion Dreams Are Hypermnesic (Sometimes) Dreams as Leading, Lagging, and Concurrent Indicators The Continuity Between Dream-Life and Awake-Life Dreams Are One Dialect From a Family of Release-Phenomena Associative Structure Undergirds Meaning—As Well As Errors and Biases The Essential Fact About Dreams: They Are Confusing But Honest Appendix Application of Signal Detection Theory to Narrative Recall, Including Dreams: The Technique, Rationale, and Empirical Grounding of Criterion-Controlled Free Recall (CCFR) (Erdelyi, Martin and Emily Orne, Dinges, Halberstam, Feigin-Pfau, Ionescu, Bergstein Classic Signal-Detection Theory, ROC Functions, D', P(A), and H¦Fc Application of Classic SDT Notions to Recall: From ROC to Roc Functions and Conditionalized Hits (H|Fc) Achieving the Target False-Alarm Level, Fc: Paring-Down Narrative Recall Texts Confidence Ratings of Narrative Segments Scoring for Hits and False Alarms: Entrails Readings and Word Counts The Circumvention of Confidence Ratings By Actual Per-Segment Hits and False-Alarms Implementing the CCFR Procedure: Illustration of the Computation of H|Fc Empirical Validation of the CCFR Alternatives to the H|Fc Index of Criterion-Controlled Free Recall More Sophisticated Measures of CCFR: P(a) Simplistic Alternatives to H|Fc and P(a): Shortcuts to Dead Ends References Author Index Subject Index